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Not Every Poem Has To Be A Reportage
One of the saddest and tritest developments in Poetry is that many of us seem to think it must be some kind of reportage: a political statement or interpretation; an event statement or interpretation; a confession of some kind; or a philosophical assertion. In our time and culture, we have forgotten that Poetry is about the beauty of language; and only secondarily about the usage to which we put that language in its beauty.
Not every poem needs to be historically substantiated, or realistically located. Some poems are actually fictive. Do you really think anyone but the immediate family of Julius Caesar believed they were descended from Venus Genetrix, and that Venus' son and grandson created the territory and settlement that became Rome? Do you think Dante really believed that the Minotaur, that monstrosity created out of Pasiphae's lust to experience sexual intercourse with a stud bull, was carrying out the will of God in administering or applying punishments in the Inferno? And does anyone among us actually think that John Milton has given us the poetic equivalent of a court reporter's stenographic record of the conversations that took place between two naked people in the Garden of Eden?
And when Etienne Mallarme published L'après-midi d'un faune, did anyone read that as a headline news reportage that a rather brawny man with hooves where his feet should be had the equivalent of a wet dream about two nubile girls that he happened to sight across a meadow? Or was Mallarme's poem, Herodiade, really a judgemental confession placed in the jealous mouth of minor client queen in Galilee who happened to have a grudge against a holy man?
And when (back to uncle John again), Samson Agonistes anticipates, with some glee, causing the death of a multitude of Philistines who do not share his religious vision, while at the same time he calls down curses on the whore that was responsible for his imprisonment, would we shake our heads, mutter "Tsk tsk," and remind him---or John Milton behind him---that perhaps he should review this or that verse from the seventh chapter of the Apostle Saint Matthew's Gospel? Should we make the simplistic, narrow, and ultimately naive presumption that the voice that speaks through Samson in that poem is, in fact, John Milton, playing at ventriloquism? Or that Dante was being far too judgemental, and deliberately defiant of this or that verse from the seventh chapter of Saint Matthew's Gospel, by placing people---some of them contemporaries whom he knew and who knew him---in the Inferno? Or when, in Bram Stoker's chilling long tale, "The Judge's House," (spoiler alert . . .) the vindictive ghostly judge lynches the mathematics student, should we say (to either Stoker or the unnamed Judge), "Now look here, Brother, you need to study this or that verse from the seventh chapter of Saint Matthew's Gospel."
There was a time when Postpoems was better than this. I feel like Gedaliah surveying the ruins of Solomon's temple after the Babylonians did their marauding damage. But I take great comfort in the Prophet Haggai's message in 2:9---The glory of this latter house shall be greater than of the former, saith the Lord of hosts: and in this place will I give peace, saith the Lord of hosts.
Starward
I always suspected Herodiade
I always suspected Herodiade was a bit of a stretch of the truth, but I definitely believed, verbatim, every telling mentioned in your second paragraph until mere seconds ago. Darn it. : )
I've shared my thoughts on this before, so I'll be shorter this time. Times change, and with that, what accounts for poetry shifts, as well. That is not meant to be a swift dismissal of your critique, though. Just a statement, that, within the fold, there may be some shifts that prove of a lasting value (wheat/chaff). I, myself, enjoy many of the sort of writings that you're thirsting for. It'd be nice to have more blended in with "reporter poetry", as you have coined it, but I do often appreciate the many other ways in which people express themselves here.
I always see people expressing themselves with a pen as a win. One of the best poems I ever read probably wasn't, from a literary standpoint, of particular quality. But my friend wrote it in during a moment when she was about to kill herself, and in doing so, she incidentally talked herself down off a ledge. As such, it's one of the better poems ever written. Most people aren't writing because they are suicidal, yet there is often something healthy in expressing the turmoil inside - much of these days a product of what we're absorbing from the outside - on paper. On that last point, I think we'd both agree.
Keep writing poetry in the manner you believe in it (and I'm sure you will). Inspire others to discover their inner John Milton ; )
Thank you. The scholars with
Thank you. The scholars with whom I studied during my senior year in high school, and during my four undergrad years, were very demanding in their expectations of poetic excellence. Later, I studied, on my own, both the poetry and the literary theory of J. V. Cunningham who believed that poetry was a verbal skill that required literate and intentional preparation. Your are obviously more broadminded about poetry than I am, and I applaud you for it. I am too set in my ways to change this late in my life.
What I resent most of all about this morning's incident, which is what led to the essay above, is being accused of failing my Faith by someone who does not share it, and seems to boast about not sharing it. I will not keep silent for that. I would never attempt to comment on a person's faith practice that I neither share nor understand; that is a breach of the most basic courtesy. The demonstration of that rebuker's lack of credibility is that the rebuke was aimed at a fictive character reacting in duress to a fictive situation. Should I, following the same example, question John Milton's Faith (or is knowledge of Matthew 7) because his version of Samson looks forward to offing a few hundred Philistine snobs?
What is ironic is that the rebuker accused me of failing Christ's directives in Matthew 7 because of words that I put into the mouth of a fictive character reacting under extreme duress to a fictive situation. It began as a thought experiment: if someone I knew had been murdered, what would I say, in sonnet form, to the murderer including a Dantesque sense of the crime's enormity---both in this world and the next. It was, literally, just an excuse to try to turn a couplet into a quatrain and then into a sonnet. That's all; and then, like a commode overflowing, suddenly that person's words were in the comment section rebuking a fiction, and was apparently not informed well enough to wonder if it was fiction or not.
That said, I am grateful for your comment. Thanks for stopping by.
Starward